Editorial | War talk demands citizens' attention

President Barack Obama plans to address the nation on Tuesday, and presumably he will make his best case for limited missile strikes on Syria directly to the American people, who remain deeply skeptical if not dead-set against the U.S. making such a move.

His proxies - Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel - have been making the case publicly in sessions with congressional committee members. The conversation about American intervention in response to claims Syrian government forces used nerve gas, killing about 1,400 people and injuring thousands more, will broaden in the coming days as U.S. representatives and senators return to the Capitol after a recess, and take up the debate in earnest.

It is a debate worth having. And the American people should be fully involved in it, if they are not already.

In the run up to the president's speech and the return of Congress, today's Forum section includes a story that features an important set of questions to help form the basis of dialogue and opinion among lawmakers and citizens.

Why should the U.S. care about Syria?

What does the U.S. stand to gain by getting involved? What do we stand to lose?

What if Syria or its allies strike back?

How would this affect this country's relationship with the Arab world? With Russia and Iran?

Why not try a political solution?

What happens if we do nothing?

These are great questions, and Americans will and should have many more. The answers are complicated, and not easily arrived at - which explains, perhaps, why traditional "sides" in our polarized, political climate have changed up on this issue. The Syrian dilemma has created some strange bedfellows, which is not a bad thing. Perhaps the Syrian questions will introduce Americans to points of view, and people who hold them, that normally are found outside the echo chambers which comprise 24/7 reinforcement media. Maybe, just maybe, we will find listening points instead of talking points.

The setting for such a possibility for the opening of minds is ghastly: a civil war in Syria that already has claimed the lives of more than 100,000 people, a recent attack the U.S. asserts was chemical weapons unleashed on Syrian people by government forces, the terrible images of the dead and wounded who suffered greatly, this year's model of the age-old argument of whether to mind our own business or to mind theirs.

Impassioned arguments are being made on all sides in this country and others. Good. That's supposed to be the way it works in a democracy. And so is the act of the elected leader of the country addressing citizens about the ultimate flex of power: the use of military might.

Americans are understandably trying to shake off a sense of deja vu with Syria. They were sold on "slam-dunk" proof of WMDs in Iraq, and we know how that turned out - thousands of our dead, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead, multiple deployments for troops, an economy reeling from two wars, one still going on, put on credit ... and no WMDs. Even if Syria is not Iraq, the president must explain why this is different.

And so Americans are correct to demand proof of egregious crimes against humanity, of crossing lines - red or otherwise - that world consensus holds should not be crossed. The president must lay out that proof, without substituting conjecture for facts as was done 10 years ago, and must explain why us. And Americans must press him to answer the question beyond, "Should we strike?" That question is: "What happens after that?" He'll need to dispense with any verbiage about being greeted as liberators. That line won't work again.

But maybe these will.

Fourteen years ago, another American president was justifying the decision to militarily intervene in Kosovo in the 1990s, to save the lives of people undergoing untold atrocities and to stabilize a region. To make that argument, he reached back more than 50 years to yet another president, one four years into a world war and only a few months away from his own death, who spoke these words to a nation weary of war and death and saving the world from its darker forces. Franklin Delano Roosevelt said:

"We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations far away. We have learned that we must live as men, not as ostriches, nor as dogs in the manger.

"We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community.

"We have learned the simple truth, as Emerson said, that 'The only way to have a friend is to be one.'

"We can gain no lasting peace if we approach it with suspicion or mistrust or with fear. We can gain it only if we proceed with the understanding, the confidence, and the courage which flow from conviction."

On Tuesday, another president is set to speak to today's war-weary citizens about other dark forces he says must be countered. That is his duty. It is our duty, as citizens, to listen, and to speak, as well.

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Editorial | War talk demands citizens' attention

President Barack Obama plans to address the nation on Tuesday, and presumably he will make his best case for limited missile strikes on Syria directly to the American people, who remain deeply